PASSIVE INCOME CREATION HANDOUTS AND WORKSHEETS
Bill O’Hanlon, Possibilities, 223 N. Guadalupe #278, Santa Fe, NM 87501 USA, 505.983.2843, website:
Other websites of Bill’s to check out if you are curious:
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Note: These are fairly new handouts. If you find typographical or grammatical errors in them, they're here for a purpose. Some people actually enjoy looking for them and I strive to please as many people as possible. Seriously, let me know if you spot one and I’ll correct it.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents......
P.A.S.S.I.V.E.: An easy to remember acronym to give you an overview......
DIGITAL PRODUCT OPTIONS......
EBooks......
Creating e-books......
EReports or Tips EBooklets......
Pricing?......
Selling your ebooks......
Creating digital audios......
Pricing?......
Selling your digital audios......
Marketing Your Audios......
Audio product creation checklist......
Create and sell online audio-visual courses......
Pricing?......
Instructions for creating and uploading Online Courses......
Teleseminar Basics......
How to Create Teleseminars, Telecalls or Teleclasses......
Sample Telecall Instructions, Etiquette and Procedures......
Webinars/Webcasts......
Webinar/Web Conferencing services......
Teleseminar Services......
Video product creation checklist......
Membership/Continuity Sites......
Creating physical products......
CDs/DVDs/Digital audio-video players......
Print on Demand (POD) books/self-publishing......
Print on Demand (POD) Publishers......
PHYSICAL PRODUCT CREATION WORKSHEET......
SELLING YOUR STUFF ONLINE......
Setting up your cart......
E-junkie......
1Shopping Cart/Web Marketing Magic......
Sample sequence for Passive Income Creation with details......
Setting up your first product and selling it......
ONE PAGE WEB SITES/SALES PAGES......
Why one page?......
Elements of a one page website/sales letter......
GETTING THE WORD OUT/MARKETING......
The Sales Process Big Picture......
Four pieces to Internet Marketing Selling Process/Sequence......
Building an email mailing list......
Become visible......
Podcasting......
Blogging......
Website......
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)......
Teleseminars......
Webinars......
Email newsletters/announcements......
Free bonuses......
Viral ebooks or videos......
Paid ads......
Audios and videos on your website or blog......
Videos on freestanding websites......
Comment on others’ blogs or videos......
Create an email signature that includes your newsletter link and bonus offer......
YouTube Tips......
Sales boosters......
Using Social Media as Marketing Tools......
MARKETING PLAN WORKSHEET......
OUTSOURCING......
Reasons Why Not To:......
What should you outsource?......
OUTSOURCING WORKSHEET......
Autoresponders: Automating email and freeing time......
Autoresponders 101......
Autoresponder services......
Creating a Blog and How to Blog Effectively......
Benefits......
Setting it Up......
Advanced Blogging......
Article Marketing......
Podcasting Basics......
What are podcasts?......
Three types......
Easiest way to create......
More complex......
Getting sound into your computer......
Posting on website or podcast hosting service: Gotta put it somewhere on the web......
Have a website/blog linked to your podcast......
Get listed and posted on iTunes and other directories......
Pre-planning your podcast......
Passive income through affiliate referrals......
Steps/sequence suggestions for creating passive income......
The Internet System for Passive Income (iSPI)......
Steps to building passive income......
Barriers to Success and How to Overcome Them......
YOUR PLAN OF ACTION/TIMELINE......
NICHE DISCOVERY/CLARIFICATION WORKSHEET......
PRODUCT BRAINSTORMING SHEET......
MARKETING BRAINSTORMING SHEET......
ONE PAGE WEBSITE CHECKLIST......
SITES TO VISIT/THINGS TO CHECK OUT AND THINGS TO REMEMBER...
TO DO LIST/ACTIONS TO TAKE......
P.A.S.S.I.V.E.: An easy to remember acronym to give you an overview
Products – You’ve got to have stuff to sell. The best stuff is digital, but you can create passive income with physical products as well
Allies/assistants – You probably won’t be able to pull this off all alone. You’ll need technical helpers and live presence assistants or virtual assistants. Assemble a great team and your personal supporters or mentor or coach.
Set up automated systems of sales, marketing, order-taking and order fulfillment
Social networking – Use free online social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and others to broaden your network. Develop your offline social networks too.
Internet tools and presence – The web will constitute the heart of your marketing and automating.
Videos – Very effective communcation and marketing tool. Master videos and you will be far ahead of others who don’t use them yet.
Execute – Don’t just dream. Do. Web years are like dog years. Things move fast. Ready, aim, fire. Just do it. Fix it in the mix.
DIGITAL PRODUCT OPTIONS
“One of the secrets of success for the lazy person? It’s the opposite of the long-time commercial establishment’s motto for success: No location, no location, no location.” –Bill O’Hanlon
Here is a list of the typical digital/online products and services that you can sell:
E-books
E-reports
Kindle books/ebook reader books
E-Mail tips (like the one you are reading now!)
Digital audios
Digital videos
Membership sites
Teleclasses/telecalls
Telephone/Skype-based coaching
Web-based courses
iPhone apps/software
Value tip: People like to consume stuff in different forms. Use your time more efficiently and satisfy customers by offering the same content in multiple forms.
Value tip: Don’t have products yet and want to start making passive income right away? Sell someone else’s products as an affiliate. Or find an old book that is in the public domain (out of copyright- 70+ years in print with no renewal; add some new material-say, an introduction, a commentary or some of your own material) and sell it.
Value tip: What should you be selling? According to Marci Shimoff, bestselling author and speaker, people want three things:
- Knowledge
- Inspiration
- Tools/Tactics/Technique
You can remember this with the simple mnemonic: KIT.
EBooks
Ebooks are short books in digital and downloadable form you sell and deliver over the web. People read them on their computers, print them out and read them, or read them in e-readers (like the iPhone, the Kindle or Sony Reader). They are fast and easy to create. They are easy to deliver. You can see and download an example (for free) on my website:
Creating e-books
Creating e-books is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get started creating and selling digital products. While ebooks don't yet sell in the quantities that print books do, they are usually higher profit items and much easier to create and sell. First we’ll cover the mechanics of creating ebooks as Ibelieve it’s important for you to realize how easy the process of creating an ebook can be. Later, I will speak to pricing and the importance of the topic about which you choose to write. Then I’ll get into how to sell your ebook (we’ll cover marketing in another handout).
You begin the process by finding a clearly focused idea for your e-book. You should usually limit your e-book products to books that are short, have high-value information you want to get to people quickly, and people are highly motivated to buy. If the book is longer or the material will be topical and up-to-date for much longer, you would typically channel it in the direction of being a print book.
Next, create a simple and clear outline for the book, as well as a title and subtitle.
Next, write the book in the word processing program with which you are most comfortable. I currently use Microsoft Word.
Then copy the text into a page-formatting program (I use Macs, so I often use their “Pages” page-layout program, but Word is getting more and more sophisticated with each version for Windows and Macs) to make it look more attractive. You could use the original Word file, but it won't look quite as good.
We used to create our own covers, but we are not that great at doing that, so lately we have been hiring someone to create covers for our ebooks. That is fairly inexpensive and results in a lot more professional look I can also use in my sales and marketing process. (I have used Wendy Wood at You can just Google the term "create ebook cover" and you will find both programs and people who will help you with this task.You will see many options for doing this. You can also go to Elance ( and put in a request for bids. You will find many people willing to create an ebook cover, and who can also format and produce the entire book.
Lastly, turn the book into a PDF. A PDF (short for Printer Description File) is a type of file that can be viewed by essentially every computer on the planet and ensures the book will look precisely like you designed it (in effect, it takes a picture of the book in the form in which you finalize it). Mac users are ahead of the game in this regard, since Macs have an automatic simple process built in to them that easily let you create PDFs from whatever kind of file you have. Just choose Print from the file menu of your word processor and then when the print dialogue box shows up, choose "Save as PDF" by clicking the little PDF button in the lower left hand corner of the Print dialogue window. Newer Windows operating systems, I am told, have a similar process.
Windows users sometimes have this option as well, depending on your machine, but if you don’t, you’ll have to go to a site like to convert their files, which usually only takes minutes and is free.
You could also create your ebook by having some audio transcribed. I sometimes record parts of my talks and have them transcribed. Or interview several people and turn that into an ebook after transcription. Or you might get a telecall transcribed and offer it as an ebook or bonus when you sell the audio.
There are several inexpensive transcription services you can use:
Value tip: Creating an ebook cover for free on the web:
Although you might want to pay and get something really slick. I’ve used Charlie Fish ( Someone I trust recommended Heather Kirk ( Vaughn Davidson ( and Josh Haldeman (
Value tip: Get your ebooks ready to sell on Amazon.com and for the iPhone and other formats at can convert Word files into all e-book formats and also sell your ebooks on their site (you keep 80% of the profits).
EReports or Tips EBooklets
EReports or Tips ebooklets are really short version of ebooks. See a few examples of mine at: These involve making a list of items and expanding on that list with a sentence or two and perhaps some hot web links. I learned (from Paulette Ensign, a tip and Ereport maven) her formula for creating tips: one sentence starting with a positive verb (an action word) followed by one or two sentences explaining why or how.
The tips or reports are often in the form of:
The top ten reasons why
The top ten myths
50 ways to
50 resources for
25 top sites on
The 20 ways to
15 steps to
3 mistakes that
Secrets of
Pricing?
Pricing your e-book is an art, not a science. The value of your ebook rests in how important the information is to your buyer and how clearly you can communicate that urgency. First, you can sell your e-book for whatever your market will bear and you can only learn what that is by trying out various prices and letting your customers vote with their credit cards. Second, you might be able to charge more than a comparable print book. Why? Because you can deliver the material instantly and it might have more value than a print book because reading the book will create more value than the price the customer paid for it.
For example, if you read and use the material from this handout to create even one digital product and sell it for a profit of more than you paid for the e-book, you will likely perceive it as valuable and worth whatever you invested in it.
If I could convince you the material in this book could be worth more than a thousand dollars to you within a relatively short time and you have not been able to find the information anywhere else, you might be willing to pay a lot for the e-book. I have paid $97 for a short e-book when it contained information I deemed I could use to make back that amount of money in a reasonable amount of time. I have even bought ebooks that contained information I could have gotten elsewhere for free. Why? The authors of the ebooks pulled together information that would have taken me hours to find on my own, so buying the ebook saved me a great deal of effort.
I usually sell my e-books for $50 or less and sell e-reports (shorter, more bullet-based e-books) for $25 or less. Having some inexpensive eReports and other products for $5 and $7 can entice people to “impulse buy” and then help you establish a relationship with buyers who will often end up buying more expensive items from you, like Boot Camps and Intensive trainings, as well as costlier audio, online and video products and coaching.
Selling your ebooks
I use a shopping cart to sell my ebooks. I use WebMarketingMagic, which is a private brand name for a popular shopping cart called 1ShoppingCart. It’s a sophisticated shopping cart that lets me do lots of stuff besides sell things (like set up and send autoresponders, make coupons and bundle products, track my sales, track ad responses and so on). So it is worth it for me to pay a little more than the least expensive shopping carts. Click the link to see it and/or sign up.
(
[Please note that this link is my affiliate link, which we’ll discuss in a later handout; but I get a commission if you use this link and sign up for the shopping cart. It doesn’t cost you any more for the service to use the link.)
You can sign up for a free or inexpensive trial of this shopping cart and most others, so there is little risk.
These shopping carts generate little bits of web code you can copy and put on your blog, your website or in an email newsletter.
A less expensive alternative is e-junkie ( and PayPal ( If you want to take credit cards, a good option is PowerPay (
Another option is to sell your ebook on ClickBank (
There is a $49.95 initial setup fee; standard markup is $1 + 7.5% of the total purchase price; affiliate referrals result in smaller fees. You can have others on the site sell your ebook or other digital products for a cut of the profits (this is called an affiliate relationship). The advantage is you get many others as your salespeople. The disadvantage: You get less per sale. Still, if you don’t have a mailing list or following, this can be a good way to get started and generate some income and a following for future releases and products.
Other similar services:
Selling on Commission Junction
Selling on Clickbooth
Selling on Blish
A service that sells your digital content for a cut of the profits; no fee to upload or list your content; they take their chunk only when they sell it.
Value tip: Don’t call them ebooks or downloadable books. Call them Programs; or Systems; Guides; or Courses.
Value tip: Take a screenshot of a PowerPoint slide that you have created with a nice design and the title/subtitle of your book and your name. Use this as in ads for the book and as the book cover. How do you take a screenshot? Windows: Press the Print window button when you have the slide filling the screen. Or buy SnagIt for Windows ( On Macs: Simultaneously press Command (or Open-Apple)+Shift+4 and then use the target that appears to select the area you want to capture by holding down the mouse button and dragging until the area is highlighted.
Creating and Selling Digital Audio
Creating digital audios
I find creating digital, downloadable audios (they could also easily be turned into CDs) to be the next easiest product category. Because I am an experienced speaker, can think well on my feet, and am knowledgeable about audio (being an amateur musician), perhaps this category is easier for me than it will be for you, but I still think it is pretty easy.
You can create your raw digital audios in three major ways:
1. Record them directly onto a digital recorder. The best ones (for ease of use, and price/quality ratio) as I write this is the Edirol R-09 ($305 USD as this is written at This is a small handheld unit with built-in microphones that does a great job recording high-quality digital audio. It uses digital storage cards like a digital camera uses to store the recordings and then you can transfer them to your computer through a USB connector.